“BETTER ACCESS TO BRITISH SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND ACADEMIC
PAPERS BY 2014”?
The UK
Government’s aim of “better access to British scientific research and academic
papers by 2014” (as stated in the BIS press release of 16 July 2012) is to be
welcomed. The problem with the Government’s policy lies in the strategy for the
achievement of the aim. The points below suggest fundamental flaws in the
Government’s strategy, flaws which threaten the success of the policy and could
set the UK on a slow and expensive route to open access for many years beyond
2014. The Forum held at Imperial College on 27 September 2012 was very valuable
in highlighting the issues but the response from RCUK did nothing to dispel the
following concerns about the Government and RCUK policies.
·
The Government
policy rules out any addition to the open access pool of the UK’s current
research outputs through deposit in institutional repositories. Even if the
policy of payment to publishers for open access to journal articles works
smoothly, no single route to open access has been 100% successful in the past.
Not to use the opportunity of adding to UK open access content through
repositories at a lower cost is a perverse decision.
·
The
possibility in the new RCUK policy for authors to deposit the final version of
their work in a repository without payment to a publisher is so qualified as to
be meaningless in practice. The deposit only becomes possible when the article
is published in those journals unable to offer an open access option through payment
of an “author publication charge”. Most publishers are unlikely to miss the
opportunity to gain additional income and will offer a paid open access option.
·
Unusually
for important policy statements, neither the UK Government policy statement of
16 July 2012 nor the RCUK open access policy provide any rationale or evidence
for the choice of open access journals as the sole (in the case of the
Government, preferred in the case of RCUK) route for access to current
published research outputs. The rationale outlined by the Government for open
access itself is valid but no case is made for the open access model chosen.
·
No
mechanism has been set up by the UK Government to ensure that the taxpayer
receives value for money. The administration of the payment to publishers for
open access is to be left to the UK Research Councils and the university
institutions through block payments, reducing the funds available for new
research programmes. The payments to publishers for open access to individual
articles will not be capped and therefore no prediction can be made about the
number of articles to be made open access.
·
Competition
between open access publishers has the potential to reduce the cost of
publishing in OA journals but will not be effective while RCUK leaves the
management of funds to institutions without involving authors. The separation
of authors from the cost of library subscriptions is one factor in the high
cost of journal subscriptions and this situation will be replicated in the cost
of open access publishing.
·
Universities
will have to decide what happens to the dissemination of RC-funded research
results once the block grant has been used up. Will universities be expected to
fund APCs from their Funding Council income in that situation? University
repositories have been used by universities as records of publications from
their researchers but will that infrastructure fall into disuse as a result of
the move to open access journals as the sole or preferred dissemination route?
· The Finch Report
identified a role for repositories as “a mechanism for enhancing the links
between publications and associated research data” but created difficulties for
researchers in using such links by allocating the publication role to OA
journals. Seamless re-use of text and data requires both to be accessible
through the same host.
The success of
the UK Government’s policy and the cost to the taxpayer will always be at risk
until the issues identified above have been resolved. Will this Government be
remembered for its wisdom in supporting open access for publicly-funded
research outputs or for its failure to implement open access within a
sustainable and cost-effective infrastructure?
Fred Friend
Honorary
Director Scholarly Communication UCL
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